You know him from Ugly Betty and Modern Family. Now Michael Lorenzo Urie is on the
London stage playing Barbra Streisand’s shop assistant! The American caught up with him
as he prepared for the marathon one-man show – and asked him about his great name...

M

y dad’s family came from
Scotland. I actually worked
in Scotland and the locals told me
there’s a Ury House and a Urie Loch.
That side of our family is a mystery
to us because my dad’s father died
when my dad was very young. I may
look into it when I’m over there.
I was sorta hoping to get on that
show, Who Do You Think You Are? let them pay for it! My dad’s mother
came to the US with her family
and my dad’s father followed her,
because he was in love with her.
My mom’s maiden name was
Bonazzi, she’s third generation
American – her parents were both
full-blown Italian and they grew
up in New York and met there. My
uncles were born in New York and
they moved to Texas for work – they
were in the construction business.
I’m really more Texan than anything!
You don’t sound very Texan.
I know, I was raised by New York
Italians. Then I went to Juilliard
drama school when I was nineteen
and whatever twang was left was
stripped away. Michael Benjamin
Washington was a year ahead of me
in High School, I looked up to him
so much because he’s an amazing
actor. He didn’t get into Juilliard and
I thought it must be the greatest
school in the world if he didn’t get
in, so I’d never get in. I then had the
idea of being a drama teacher, but
my grades weren’t great because I

26 April 2015

spent all my time building sets and
rehearsing plays, so the teaching
schools I applied to didn’t accept
me. I decided to go to a community college which had a great
theater program, really creative and
modern. My teacher there urged
me to audition for Juilliard, which
I thought was crazy. Next thing I
knew, I was in New York. The minute
I got here I knew it was home –
regardless of what I was doing, I
wanted to be doing it here!
Was that the family background?
Maybe it’s in my genes! I like
driving around the wide open
spaces of Texas and I love nature
and trees, but it makes sense for me
in New York and Chicago and London – cities that thrive on pedestrians and mass transportation. I’m a
creature of the urban!
At Juilliard you won the John
Houseman Prize for Excellence in
Classical Theatre. Would you like to
do more classical work?
I would – I loved doing Shakespeare and Commedia. In fact I got
Ugly Betty after a casting director
saw me off-off-Broadway in a basement doing a Jacobean play, The
Revenger’s Tragedy. It was a really
cool production, very rock & roll
and sexy and I played this evil, petulant Duke. He was the villain – well,
they’re all terrible in that play – but
I was very mean and bitchy and I
looked like David Bowie. A casting

director stopped me after the show
and said “I loved what you did.” I
remember it well – actors always
remember that kind of interaction – and I kept tabs on what he
was working on. I saw a breakdown
[information on a proposed show]
for a tiny co-star part in a pilot
he was shooting in New York and
I thought it sounded similar to
what he’d seen me doing. I told my
agents to get me an appointment,
but they didn’t want me playing a
part that small as I had previously
done one high profile series regular
pilot thing that didn’t get picked up.
I insisted so they did, and I got the
job. And that was Ugly Betty.
Is it true that Marc St James was
not originally going to be a recurring character - Wilhelmina Slater,
the villain played by Vanessa
Williams, was going to have a different assistant in each episode?
Yes, Marc was a great part, but
only made greater by working with
Vanessa. She could have kept me
in the shadows, but as we were
shooting she would say, stand
closer to me and you’ll be in the
shot. She noticed I was imitating
her physicality, thought it was funny
and asked me what else she could
do that I could imitate. Between her
and Silvio Horta, the creator, and
Teri Weinberg the producer, and the
directors we shaped the character,
and Marc became an integral part